Ten countries voted alongside Russia opposing the resolution. Russia’s supporters from A to Z:
Armenia
Belarus
Bolivia
Cuba
North Korea
Nicaragua
Sudan
Syria
Venezuela
Zimbabwe
Notable among countries that did not oppose the resolution were Iran and the Central Asian republics, including Kazakhstan.
The resolution passed by a vote of 100-11, with 58 abstaining.
24 comments:
Among those 100 countries, there were very small ones and others coerced by the imperialists and former colonialists..........
Those abstaining and voting against, represent majority of the Earth's population because countries like China, India, Brasil, Pakistan, Egypt, Algeria, AFGANISTAN, Argentina and many others abstained from supporting the West.
The Islamic Republic and several other countries haven't been present, physically, during that voting, and Islamic Republic position is similiar to that with the Georgian situation......
It is interesting to remember that Palestinian recognition's resolution had gained much more votes and defeted the usual bullies of the world ................
Not an U...'s altar boy
That is true. Most of the important nations either VOTED AGAINST or ABSTAINED. It is also interesting to note the while this farce was taking place in NY, the BRICS and Russia including the Presidents and PM's of China, India and Brazil were meeting in Central Asia to promote trade and political ties.
If anything this general assembly votes shows the new multi-polar Asia centric world that is not interested in US and its lapdogs UK and French manipulation. In the previous years there has been almost unanimous UN general assembly unity on Palestine and Zionist occupation when only the US, Canada and four small Micronesian islands used to vote against the resolutions on Palestine. This is a clear victory for Russia's diplomatic stand and more than 80% of the world's population supporting it. India, China and Pakistan alone make up over 3 billion people. Most of the African heavyweight also abstained.
@8:50 PM,
The Islamic Republic was not present during the vote, why? Was its representative delayed because of the New York traffic? I think not. Iran could not and would not approve the Russian annexation of Crimea. If that becomes the norm of international order, the Iranian territorial integrity and its existence as a unified country will be threatened. Not opposing the resolution was the right thing for Iran. They did a courageous thing.
Putin played a stupid game. Russia had all the influence it needed in Crimea; she did not have to annex it. The result is an almost universal isolation, save few countries that you might side with ideologically.
BTW, the only country you capitalized its name in your comments was Afghanistan. Do you know why did it abstain? Afghanistan does not recognize the Durant line and believe the greater Pashtunistan belongs to Afghanistan, including the Pakistani side. It wants to reserve its rights to annex Pakistani Pashtun areas in future. Pakistan abstained for same reason; it wants to annex the Afghan side of Pashtunistan. You see, Putin has legitimized the act and dream of land grab.
The 100 votes in favor of the resolution included almost all major countries in the world. If you believe Russia scored a victory here, have a nice dream!
@Anon 11:07 PM,
Please name all important countries that abstained. We know the ones which voted against, see the list in the post. I also know only ten countries sided with Russia. Isn't that the manifestation of an isolated Putin is on this issue? Why do you support the annexation of Crimea?
Abstention in diplomacy means SUPPORT. China, India, Pakistan, and Brazil are not some Cocos islands but heavyweight nuclear armed nations, even Brazil is a nuclear capable state. So in real terms Russia has global support.
Iran, Israel Serbia and several former Soviet republics in Central Asia like Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan were among those that did not take part in the vote.
If you kindly bother to read Russian history you will understand the Ukraine and Crimea are historic Russian heartlands.
The West must understand that, to Russia, Ukraine can never be just a foreign country. Russian history began in what was called Kievan-Rus. The Russian religion spread from there. Ukraine has been part of Russia for centuries, and their histories were intertwined before then. Some of the most important battles for Russian freedom, starting with the Battle of Poltava in 1709 , were fought on Ukrainian soil. The Russians lost over 20 million people defending Ukraine from Nazis. The Black Sea Fleet — Russia’s primary means of projecting power in the Mediterranean — is based by long-term lease in Sevastopol, in Crimea. Even such famed dissidents as Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn and Joseph Brodsky insisted that Ukraine was an integral part of Russian history and, indeed, of Russia.
So how can reclaiming its own territory given away by Khrushchev in an USSR internal administrative move be "annexation"? Putin has just corrected a historical anomaly and good for him and Russia. The same logic would apply if Iran reintegrated Azerbaijan. Armenia used the same pretext in Nagorno-Karabakh and not one eye twitched, so why the double standards?. What about the alien Zionists are occupying Palestine for 65 years that is not even remotely related to the Khazars that came there and so on.
Iran ducked!
Mark
Iran did not duck, instead it responded in a way that every keen and objective Iran observer expected. That is neither side with the east nor the west.
The arbitrary border between Afghanistan and the nascent state of Pakistan in 1947 is called the DURAND Line, named after British political agent Major Mortimer Durand and dates back to the treaty in 1893 with the Afghan ruler Amir Abdur Rehman Khan. The drunk British bureaucrat Cyril Radcliffe who presided over the Border Commission on the partitioning of India in 1947 gave this historically unjust border a defacto status as the new Afghan-Pakistan border and no Afghan or Pashtun have ever recognized it since then causing on-going tensions and wars, just like the Occupation of Palestine by Zionist has not been recognized by Arabs.
Anon 11:40 PM,
"Abstention in diplomacy means SUPPORT." Then by your logic, Russia supported UNSC resolution on Libya, because it abstained from that vote. Correct? Or is it that you just make up rules, here on voting abstention at the UN, to support your argument?
China, India and Brazil all had serious reservations for the risky and illegal Russian move to annex Crimea. That’s why they abstained. They could have voted against the resolution if they supported Russia.
I no great admirer of Russia, and Iran has lost 20% of its original historic areas to the Russians. However, in this case history does matter as Iran has a good case for Azerbaijan reunification. The Yalta conference sowed the seeds of today's unraveling. In any case, an abstention at the UN or any other forum means tacit support. Considering Russia is an unprincipled nation and had gulped down Iranian $1 billion plus for the S-300 that were never delivered, Iran's AWOL status at the UN vote was a good way out. The Serbs who are fellow Slavs and themselves recipients of NATO bombing in 1999 did the same, not to mention Israel which always plays both sides.
The discussion here was not on Durand line per se, but the reason why Afghanistan abstained from Crimea vote. It did so, I argued, because it does not recognize Durand and wanted to reserve its rights to claim all Pashtunistan, including the Pakistani part. If this vote is considered a victory for Russia, then that strengthens the argument that Putin's move was very risky, and will come back and haunt Russia and the region for long time.
I don't believe the Iranian absence were meant to relay a No-West-No-East policy. It came from the realization that Putin was on a dangerous course. Annexation of Crimea, if it were to be supported by the international community, could have serious and immediate implications for Iran's own territorial integrity. Iran was correct not to side with Russia here.
There was nothing "stupid" with Putin's move, nor is the country so utterly isolated on the diplomatic front, since it was not expecting any of those 100 countries to vote against it in the first place and the Russian president knew full well to recognize the opportunity the self-appointed Kiev government handed over to his country by instantly antagonizing Ethnic Russians as the very first political act they played and tried to act as existing law, and the blind eye they thought intelligent to turn to widespread Neo-Nazi abuses now turning against them encircling Parliament and threatening political stability in Kiev itself even more. They played with the fires of fundamentalism like their western patrons did elsewhere in hot regions of the globe and are now paying the price in quite a surprisingly early fashion.
Anyway, anti-Russian law that was the principal basis Putin used to garner massive support both in Crimea itself for the referendum idea and subsequent vote, AND for Russian-speaking southern and eastern industrial Ukraine becoming a negotiated element of a diplomatic settlement now that Crimea is secured as a geopolitical point is a good show of who's the winner and who's the loser in this grand standoff, and the latter is certainly not Putin... Kerry and Ashton were helpless to basically do ANYTHING to prevent their actions and now facts on the ground are there and they have to deal with it, Israeli settlement style, minus the deaths and evictions and plus widespread local support. Russia will not see its crucial existing support wane in any way from its main allies would it be within BRICS or elsewhere, since this vote was largely symbolic and non-binding in nature, the Iranian case is a very good example of that, since its strategic relationship with Russia certainly won't evolve one iota from what it is after this vote.
And there is no such thing as a Pandora's box for countries annexation, if anything the West and countries they support like Israel started this and even before them the western colonial empires with their arbitrary drawing of foreign frontiers in countries they once controlled did the job pretty well and set course for similar practices to follow, and that constitute ethnic rifts to this day, would it be in India, Pakistan or the Middle East or North Africa in general, so that argument of depicting Putin as the grand responsible for modern day imperialism is odd at best, let alone the Kosovo precedent which in many ways resembles a deadly, illegal militaristic version of what happened with zero death and a vote with massive participation in Crimea... as for Iraq and Afghanistan, Obama's claim that they did a nicer job here with respect to International Law than Putin did in Crimea can decently be picked as the best diplomatic joke of the century.
No matter how you want to spin the story, one fact remains: Russia dismembered Ukraine because it was unhappy with what happened in Maidan. This is a very dangerous move that will come back to haunt Russia and the region.
I am spinning nothing Mr. Uskowi, I'm merely underlining the "other" side of the story, one you do not want to hear or accept as it really is, it seems.
The Revolutionary Kiev government made a critical mistake in gearing up hostilities against ethnic Russians as no less than one of the very, very first of their political moves as soon as they stepping their places of power, and such behavior neither went unnoticed nor interpreted to basicallye every single Russian soul in vicinity. Call it opportunism, call it reckless separatism backed by vicious imperialism, but fear of anti-Russian Ukraine generated as the result of those instant policies was fully genuine, silence towards widespread anti-Russian abuses by far-right fringes of Revolutionary elements in Crimea and in relevant parts of Russian-filled Ukraine also helped a lot in that regard to be perceived as compelling evidence towards their stance, which was also, of course, utilized and amplified even further by Vladimir Putin.
Nonetheless, 80% voters in referendum and 97% of "yes" votes in response to it expressed through a verified and even Europe-validated process is here to remind other "facts" to you. Of course the whole thing is up to debate and any UN vote will be biased on both sides and politically motivated at its core like every other resolution.
Bottom line for me personally is and remains : No matter how hard it wished to do so, would the post-uprising government not have acted so hastily and irresponsibly, Putin would never have been given enough momentum to mount such as bold and definitive move and so with so much local support both in Russia itself and particularly, in Crimea. And without such clear and overwhelming support, the US, EU and NATO would have been able to garner a much stronger and determined position against any kind of preliminary military move like massing of troops by Putin, from Kiev all the way down to Simferopol, and thus allow themselves to take much more diplomatic and even military risks without fearing early retaliation from Moscow, and could have even possibly built consensus among Russian elements of the Crimean military not willing to risk their lives on an unneeded, sudden and senseless reunification effort while they are confident that they can keep on living as happily and fairly on this piece of land as they did until now.
Indeed, Putin drew his boldness, rapidity and success of action mainly from military and civilian support everywhere in Crimea, switching flags and allegiances as fear and phantasm of "Russian blood thirsty Nazi Kiev" from the mainland was guiding their choices towards reunification.
I always look forward hearing the other side of story. However, the discussion, at least from my point of view, has not been on tactics used by the revolutionary government in Kiev. Russia’s strategy regarding Crimea and Ukraine should not, and is not, based on Kiev’s mistakes, as you suggest. Dismembering Ukraine had to be a policy well thought at the highest levels of Kremlin. It’s indeed the old-fashion Russian imperialism. As in old days!
The percentage of votes in favor of Russian annexation is not relevant to this case. Russia and Crimean regional government had all the chance to call for the referendum when one of their supporters was president in Kiev. The timing only suggested that Russia and her lackeys in Crimea dismembered Ukraine because they didn’t agree with what happened in Maidan. They wouldn’t have done so if Maidan had lost.
So do you really believe that it’s proper to declare independence if a region does not like the politics of the day of a central government? That’s the tragedy of what Putin did. But considering his KGB upbringing, I doubt if he would see it in those terms. God help Russia!
Fair enough, Russian imperialism like in the old days of the Tsar or the USSR, or the current days of the US attacking, destroying, occupying, ruining, destabilizing and then leaving a country when it once happened to host a government they dislike, I have no problem with putting each and everyone of their respective, past and present infamies side by side, and I called it vicious opportunism to that very effect sir , don't get me wrong !
Still, Putin's "lackeys in Crimea" have actually proven to be representing something like 80% of Crimea's population it seems. The latter didn't get a chance or felt a need to go to the voting polls before rightfully observing that an openly Russia-unfriendly government has self-appointed itself with no proper vote to end the interim period in sight. Plus, radical elements supporting it freely abusing their fellow Russians on the Ukrainian mainland which can also be perceived as a nod for such sudden urge to secede or accept the idea of a referendum and actually participate massively to it. If it seemed so out of place or odd for all these people to secede, why did they adhere to the principle en masse in such short notice ? Of course, that is notwithstanding the rushed and militarized, hence invalid and imperial fashion through which the whole process was pushed forward, I entirely agree on this one too, that is where Putin's megalomaniac and expansionist character attributes show themselves. The man obviously wanted to maximize his chances of succeeding in his move before an obvious attempt by NATO to establish itself at the expense of its country's naval presence there, and this with little to no regard to its population's opinion of it.
At least I can't recall a single occurrence where a given country's government asks its population about the upcoming joining of their nation to NATO, and considering the far-reaching pro-west and anti-Russian attributes of the Maidan government, I really doubt they would have proven an exception to that rule.
"The People" talked in Maidan and an elected government got illegally ousted from power, including with but not exclusively via violent methods. Another "People" had the chance to peacefully express its opinion as to whether they choose to secede from a Revolution/Coup appointed government they see as hostile to them. Depending on who's talking, both can be perceived as illegal and valid. Such interpretations will always occurs through the lens of geopolitical calculus from both sides. Nobody cares about state integrity or the virtues of freedom in some sort of hermetic bubble of philosophical considerations. The West didn't care about that in Serbia in 1999 when it bombed it and killed thousands, nor when it accepted a unilateral and illegal declaration of independence from Kosovo. I cannot possibly find credibility in their claims to the contrary when it comes to a newly self-appointed government ultra-friendly to their cause on the international scene.
Russia didn't come guns blazing, ripping through the Crimean landscape and annexing it through the force of arms and scorched-earth policy, IDF style in Southern Lebanon in '82, did it ? we didn't see Crimean civilians taking up arms against the Russian invader nor did we see massive retaliation from the Crimean armed forces, did we ? If you want to talk about legality, then Russia only acted along the lines of a preexisting Treaty dating back to 1954 allowing it to deploy a limited contingent in the then-autonomous area.
I hope you realize that I do not represent the "West." On the subject of Crimea, I am interested to examine the Russian annexation. I'll be more than happy to discuss the implications of the end of an empire, the Soviet empire in your alternative example of Kosovo, but that's another subject altogether.
Let me conclude by saying that I do not personally have any preference for who controls Crimea, Russia or Ukraine. I am personally sympathetic to neither of the two, for their internal political problems/systems. But I do care about the concept of declaring independence if a region is in disagreement with its central government, that's what I oppose.
Thank you, as always, for your contribution to the debate on our small blog. On areas we disagree, you are a worthy opponent.
Answer to the author's reply at 11:08 PM
The Islamic Republic's absence during that voting, has been apparently designed to keep all option open for her future actions.
By this absention, it is possible to cooperate with both countries of the dispute, the Russia Federation as well as with Ukraine, in all maters including economical and military ones.
That decision, not to participate in that voting, preserves Iranian rights to its teritorial integrity...and doesn't close doors for a possibility that people of religious or similiar ethnic groups in the neighbouring countries, may express their desire and exercise rights to become part or unite with the Iranian teritory........
Russia decision to merge Crimea back with her teritory, was dictated by necessity to address wishes of their compatriots, and prevent possibility of future eviction of the Russian Navy from the Crimea....
I believe that Russia is aware and preparing actions in a case where that annexation fact, brings other dangers for consideration in the coming future; where some regions in Russia may attempt separation either, and where is a current prognosis that after the next 13 years, the Crimean Tatar population may outnumber the Russian population in that place.....given the current birth rates.
Not U...'s altar boy
Nader UskowiMarch 30, 2014 at 7:06 AM
If that was the case then why did iran simply not vote against it?,iran may not have agreed with putins policy on crimea,but iran has always been first and foremost non aligned and it clearly showed it here
Thank you for clarifying Mr. Uskowi, and also for always being bent on noting and publishing my comments no matter how far apart or converging they are on a given subject in regards to your own, and for your appreciation of their quality.
We are both entitled to our opinion as you often remind us rightfully, would it be on this professional blog or elsewhere for that matter. But you must also realize that my words are not directed at justifying or supporting Russia's move on another country any more than the "West" in general, as I often try to remind, at the contrary my counter-examples are not there not to inflate my own position but rather to put them in perspective with this grand geopolitical game and hypocritical posturing on the part of some countries antagonizing Russia nowadays, that in many ways are directly responsible of and explain a lot of its current inflexible posture while going wholly unnoticed in their mass media.
In other terms, while we might disagree on the interpretation of the "endgame", I regard all the players as being as undesirable as you do, neither of them representing internally what I stand for on an ideological and moral level. I am indeed a regular participant on the many interesting and informative subjects posted on this blog and for personal reasons I do not always sign my posts like here, although I believe some people including you, might recognize my style and the spelling/diction mistakes that often go with it ;-)
Again, thanks for your reply.
Notwithstanding close relations with Russia especially in recent years, Iran could not accept Crimea annexation for two obvious reasons:
1. Iran has regions of its own with their own ethnicity and religion, and it could not accept the idea that such regions could secede from central government if they disagreed with its politics/central government.
2. Iran can also argue in future if it decides to go nuclear that Russian annexation of Crimea could not have happened if Ukraine had not given up its nuclear weapons voluntarily. The fact being that Russia had signed an agreement with Ukraine in 1994 guaranteeing its territorial integrity if Ukraine gave up its nukes. (So much for international agreements!)
It is amazing that you support the US which overwhelmingly imposes double standars, more than those other countries, including Russian Federation, in regard to the UN resolutions or conventions.
Look at the previous resolution, for instance related to Palestinian isuues, adopted UN conventions; among them Convention of the Sea, where the US has disregarded decisions by the majorities of the UN members, and where the US opposed convention related to children's rights, mines (weaponries' ban) and many other resolutions and conventions.
And by that way, those entities have no moral rights to dictate their wishes or teachings to others.
In relation to your point that Russia guaranteed (in 1994) Ukrainian integrity for the nukes, it is necessary to point that the former entities of Soviet Union and the West had stated, that there will not be an expansion....of the NATO, toward the East.........and what is happenning after that.
Not an U...'s altar boy
The amazing thing is that you can not stay with the discussion on hand, here role of Russia in annexing Crimea. You attempt the subject, deflecting away from the Russian actions, and why do you need to justify those actions? Russia did sign the agreement on respecting the country's territorial integrity with Ukraine and now has completely done the reverse and occupied part of that country. What's your opinion on this subject?
When there would be an occasion to discuss NATO, like if NATO occupies part of another country, I'll be more than happy to join you in condemning such action.
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